There was another appeal before a court that was also accepted (in Boston for a prof. who wants permission to grow mj for research.) I haven't seen newer information about this.
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/05/appeals_court_accepts_challenge_of_deas_marijuana.php
Appeals Court Accepts Challenge of DEA's Marijuana Research Denial
On Friday, May 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston will hear oral arguments in a federal lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration for denying University of Massachusetts-Amherst Professor Lyle Craker a license to grow marijuana for privately funded medical research.
The arguments culminate nearly 11 years of legal and administrative proceedings trying to end the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) monopoly on the marijuana supply for research.
The lawsuit is in response to an August 15, 2011 final order issued by the DEA rejecting its own DEA Administrative Law Judge's 2007 recommendation that it would be "in the public interest" to grant Prof. Craker the research license. A laboratory at the University of Mississippi, funded by NIDA, is currently the one and only facility in the United States allowed to grow marijuana for research.
Here's information about this case that began in 2005 -
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/384/medmjresearch.shtml
During November's Supreme Court oral arguments in Raich v. Gonzalez (formerly Raich v. Ashcroft), the case challenging the federal government's ability to intervene in states where medical marijuana is legal, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that patients ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reclassify marijuana for medicinal use. That would be "the obvious way to get what they want," said Breyer. "Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum," he added.
Under federal law, the federal government has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana available for research, which comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) Mississippi pot farm. All other controlled substances are provided to researchers by DEA-licensed laboratories. But scientists seeking to study the medicinal effects of marijuana with the goal of trying to turn it into FDA-approved prescription medicine have been blocked at every turn.
Seeking to get around the research marijuana roadblock, in 2001 UMass researcher Dr. Lyle Cracker went to the DEA to win approval for a marijuana researcher production facility to be sponsored by MAPS. For three years, the DEA failed to act. Only when Craker and MAPS filed a lawsuit against the DEA last year was the agency spurred to act, and it did so by denying Craker's petition in December. Now, Craker and MAPS have been joined by the ACLU as they appeal the DEA ruling before a DEA administrative law judge. A hearing in the case is expected sometime this summer.
"The public has a right to know about possible health effects of marijuana and whether this plant material has any medicinal value," said Craker at a Monday press conference. "Only through unobstructed medical research can doctors and scientists determine the value of marijuana in treating human afflictions. My job is to make plant material available for research, and the refusal of the DEA to allow me to grow marijuana for medical research prevents a full investigation of the potential health benefits of the plant material."
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